


A Change of Pace

by Companionable



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Gen, Platonic Contact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-08 23:15:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3227162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Companionable/pseuds/Companionable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lying has been spending more and more time at Kirin and Su's place, and Kirin's lightning affinity has finally been broken. Su decides that maybe it's time to introduce Lying to an old routine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Change of Pace

**Author's Note:**

> this is old and so not relevant anymore, but i wrote it for [sam](http://sassytail.tumblr.com) and he said it was good and that the world should see it so uh... here it is i guess. just me having mushy feelings about the intimacy of letting someone wash your hair.

Su tips the brim of her hat back to check for clouds that herald impending rain as she steps out of their base, a habit leftover from Kirin’s affinity with lightning. Seeing a clear blue sky and the sun shining high within it, she smiles and rests her hands on her hips. It’s perfect weather. Looking out across the clearing, her eyes catch the glint of the sun lighting up the undisturbed surface of the lake, the rays refracting off the water onto the underside of the leaves of a nearby tree; another perfect condition. She turns back around, taking two steps back through the door to direct a stiff yell into the recesses of their home.  
  
“Alright, come on out you two! Time for demi-deities to have their baths, hop to it!”  
  
There’s a rush of displaced air -- loud enough that it has to be Kirin because he’s the only one of a size big enough to displace quite that amount of air -- as he barrels past her and out the door, already shucking his robe in favour of the undershirt and tight shorts he wears underneath. His whoop of joy as he finally leaps out off the edge of the grass and into the pristine surface of the water is unbridled. The splash he creates soaks the banks and disturbs the squid who had just started getting used to their new home, but if Kirin’s satisfied sigh after his horns and then his head break out of the water is any indication, he doesn’t at all care.  
  
Shaking her head fondly and following after him leisurely, Su bends to retrieve Kirin’s robe and fold it neatly over her arm, careful to avoid wrinkles as much as possible. A faint hissing noise from the doorway behind her reminds her that she’s not responsible for just Kirin anymore. “Lying, we’ve discussed exactly how much of this activity is optional.” The answer is none.  
  
Peeking their head around the threshold, Lying screws their face up in an expression of disgust, distaste, and dislike. “I quite recognize that you believe this to be a mandatory endeavour, and while I appreciate the virtues and honour and rectitude of personal hygiene, I don’t think the ‘quick dip in the lake’ is at all necessary.”  
  
Su walks back to the door to lean on the opposite side of the door jamb and look Lying in the eyes properly. “You don’t have to go for a genuine swim like the Great Horned Goat out there,” she says, gesturing over her shoulder to where the sounds of aquatic frolicking still echo, “but your hair is a mess and you _still_ smell like mildew, and I’d just really like for you to spend a day out with us. The water’s not going to kill you, Ly.”  
  
Despite the general softening of their demeanor and posture, Lying still makes an effort to keep an air of reluctance about them. “Try spending eons in an magically sealed well, then let me know how that assumption works out for you, Su-dear.”  
  
When she rolls her eyes at them and strides towards the water, she hears their barely-there, whispered footsteps following her, and smiles. She’d get these half-gods cleaned if it was the death of her. From her inventory, which she had filled with cleaning items and soaps of varying scents and intensities, she pulls shampoos and conditioning lotions, all brewed personally with different flowers and fruits for the greatest cleaning factor and smell-reduction, and she rests them on the bank beside her as she sits down there. Very carefully, she unties her boots and rolls her stockings down, tucking them into the tops of her shoes and setting them aside where any splashing would miss them, and gathers her skirts to tie them up around her legs. It’s not the most flattering look, but it keeps the hem of her dress from getting too soaked, and allows a certain freedom of movement that she feels she might need in dealing with her two charges this afternoon. She slips the toiletries into the loops on her belt, and ties the leather strap around her waist.  
  
Standing back up, she wades into the water, first to her ankles and then to her mid-calves, stopping with the water reaching just above her knees to turn at catch Lying hiding themselves behind a tree trunk. “Lying!” she shouts at them, accusatory, and watches the fox spirit shrink.  
  
“I believe I’ve had something of a change of heart!” they mutter hastily, red nails digging into the breaks into the bark as they grip tight to the trunk.  
  
Su rests her hands on her hips after tipping the brim of her hat back once more. “Oh no, no you don’t, you are getting in this water _today_ , kiddo.”  
  
They stammer, “L-look, I’ll do anything you want, a-anything _Kirin_ wants, I swear, just--”  
  
Crossing her arms, Su sighs. “What I _want_ is for you to get clean. You recognize that it’s not healthy to remain like this, right? This is what Kirin wants too, right Kirin?”  
  
“Are you kidding? There are _way_ better things--” Kirin says from adrift in the small lake, but cuts himself off when he turns his head from where it’s resting back in the water to find Su staring him down. “I mean. Yes, I definitely want you to do that thing. Definitely.”  
  
“A-alright. I just... on my own time, yes?” Lying offers, stepping out from behind the tree to strip down to their underclothes, a tunic and shorts that make them look impossibly smaller and much less imposing.  
  
Su smiles at them. “Absolutely. We can deal with stinky former-lightning-rods first.” She lets them sit and dip their feet into the shallow water from the banks, turning to direct her voice out over the water. The way Kirin is floating, his ears are underwater while his faces soaks up the sun, his body hanging suspended in the currents around him. “Alright, Goat-Man!” Su shouts, cupping her hands around her mouth. He lifts his head again and wades over, standing to tower over her in the shallows. “Come on, mister. You know the drill.”  
  
He grins and kneels in the water before her, the water coming up to his sternum as he shifts his gaze to look up at her. “Of course, starlight,” he says simply, and turns to sit with his back pressed close to her shins, his knees tucked up against his chest with his arms wrapped around them.  
  
Su laughs at him, looking like a schoolboy in this position, and she pulls the bottle of shampoo out of her belt, doling some out into her palm and rubbing it into a lather between her hands after replacing the bottle.  
  
She’s just gotten her hands into Kirin’s hair and started scrubbing when she hears the water disturbed just behind her. “Why do you do this? Is the beast not capable of washing his own hair?”  
  
“I’m right here, Lying, and my hearing works just fine.”  
  
“Good, then I can tell you exactly how I--”  
  
“That’s enough!” Su interrupts, tugging lightly at Kirin’s hair as she cuts her eyes away to glare at Lying. When they look appropriately cowed, she continues to lather the shampoo into Kirin’s scalp. “Kirin, dear. Would you like to tell our good friend how this all started? Or shall I leave you to prove them right?”  
  
It takes a moment for Kirin to get beyond grumbling to the point of intelligible words, but eventually he shrugs. “I was having trouble in the shower after the antlers grew.” He makes a vague gesture with his hand in the small spatial difference that exists between the end of his horns and the highest point he can reach with his hands. “Too tall, kept knocking the showerhead off.” Su smacks at the hand when it gets in her way, and he drops it back around his knees, fingers skimming the surface of the water. “I came out here to wash in the water and Su followed me out. Now it just doesn’t feel right if I do it myself. Her fingers are very gentle.”  
  
Su smiles and scratches her nails gently along Kirin’s scalp, humming to herself when he begins a pleasant rumble deep in his chest. “Plus, he’s rather terrible at remembering to, much like yourself. Having me do it for him means he not only gets out of the house, but he must actually put his work down and take a moment’s rest,” she says, patting Kirin’s cheeks with her lather-soaked hands, and he splutters fondly while she does.  
  
Looking over her shoulder finds Lying kicking their feet tentatively in the water behind her, seeming all the more distrustful of it now that they’re standing in it. “There are spells that would get me just as clean, and far quicker, I don’t see the need--”  
  
“It won’t work as well, nor last as long,” Su says with finality, but after she pats Kirin on his head and he pushes off into the lake to rinse his head, she smiles at him while washing her hands of the cleaning materials. “But, I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to. I just think that being clean in body makes for a cleaner spirit. And certainly cleaner magics.”  
  
They look like they’re about to protest, but they close their mouth and reach back behind their head to pull their hair out of a ponytail, with effort, pulling at knots and tangles to release the elastic. Shuffling forward with a glare in Kirin’s direction as he splashes and swims, Lying places themselves at Su’s feet and rests against her shins. “Well, let’s get it over and done with, then. I’m not opposed, but the sooner it’s over the sooner I can get back to other projects.”  
  
Su chuckles at them, gathering their blonde hair in her hands and leaning them back to get it properly wet. “Of course. You are always in charge, Ly. Now lean back a bit, rest your head on the water; I’ll be quick.”  
  
Their face contorts as their ears sink below the water, and Su does her best to pretend she doesn’t see the fear on the face of one so predisposed to consider themself a god of it. She can only imagine what ages spent trapped in a well would sound like, how even the trickle of water would echo and magnify, until it was all you heard. And how many nights, weeks, years spent floating in that water, all sounds muffled with your ears below it, how that too might magnify the sound of your thoughts to the point of madness. And terror.  
  
She’s gentle, dragging her fingers through the knots that are easiest to pull free in their hair, kneeling in the water so she can lean over their face and rest their head on her lap, so they know she’s never far. Kirin splashes over, thunderous and loud as the storms that used to follow him, and she cuts him a glare when she feels Lying tense in her grasp. The man raises his arms in surrender quickly, having learned long ago not to fight when Su looks quite like that, and returns to chasing the terrified squid around under the lake’s surface.  
  
“Come on now, up up,” Su says softly, patting at Lying’s head and coaxing them to sit up.  
  
They seem remarkably more relaxed now, their shoulders sagged and their posture not quite so affected.  
  
“That wasn’t so awful, now, was it?”  
  
They squirm, unsettled by the act of leaving themself in someone else’s charge, but eventually they admit, “It was marginally less atrocious than I was expecting, but still nothing I want to prolong. Get on with it, Su.”  
  
She chuckles fondly, and dumps some of the shampooing ingredient into her hand. “Yes, Your Frightening-ness.”  
  
The sun continues it’s journey through the sky as she washes Lying’s hair slowly and carefully, pulling a fine-toothed comb and a hair brush out of her belt loops as she does to strip the blood and mould out of their hair with ease. Rapidly, the water around them grows cloudy, but by that point Lying has completely relaxed themself in the water, letting Su do her work in piece. It’s slow going, the demigod’s hair likely not having seen this sort of care and attention in some several ages, the knots coming undone slowly and not without pain. As the sky begins to pink and the sun’s arc slows toward the horizon, Kirin slinks up carefully to her shoulder, and rests himself across her back. Looking down into her lap, he snorts. “Are they _sleeping_?”  
  
“Shh,” Su chides, dragging the comb through Lying’s hair in the water, the teeth running through the strands smoothly in one uninterrupted motion. “I think they needed this.  
  
Kirin tuts. “Their hair is going to take ages to dry, I’m not dealing with that in bed tonight.”  
  
She turns to him, kissing the apple of his cheek. “Well, there is elsewhere for you to sleep, isn’t there?” Su giggles at his expression of displeasure, and relents. “Worry not, we’ll be sure to dry him of before we turn in.”  
  
He sighs. “I suppose.”  
  
“Did you have a good swim though? Is it nice to be back in the water after all this time?”  
  
She feels him shrug against her back, pressing a kiss to her neck. “I miss the lightning, but this is far simpler.”  
  
Lying wriggles beneath them, shivering. “Imagine that,” she says, with a smirk. “The self-proclaimed god of fear _can_ get a chill.” Kirin muffles his laugh in her shoulder, and she elbows him. “Help me get him inside. We can pull a bed up by the furnace and dry him off there.”  
  
The sun sets behind them, and the water stills as they enter their base. Lying puts up an admirable fight the next time Su demands they wash their hair, but it’s not nearly as petulant as the first. She suspects she might be able to make a routine of this, if she tries.


End file.
